By Ben Klassen

The Church also had a devastating impact upon artistic expression. According to orthodox Christianity, art should not serve simply as an individual’s creative exploration and expression, but should enhance and promote Christian values. Gregory the Great tore down marble statues of ancient Rome and turned them into lime. It was also common practice to take some of the architectural marbles and mosaics to adorn cathedrals all over Europe and as far away as Westminster Abbey in London. It`s no secret that the Church amassed inordinate wealth during the Dark Ages. Their theft included collecting revenues from imperial rulers, by confiscating property as the result of court judgments, by selling the remission of sins (called “indulgences”), by selling ecclesiastical offices (called “simony”), and sometimes by simply taking land by force. This is well laid out in “A History of Medieval Christianity” by Russell. The Pope’s support of a king was thought to be essential in an age when the belief in the divine right of kings prevailed. By converting its people to Christianity, the Church also brought a semblance of unity to an imperial realm. Although widespread, these conversions were usually little more than a facade. Pope Gregory I illustrates his concern with the appearance that people had converted to Christianity in a letter to his emissary to Britain, St. Augustine of Canterbury:

“The people will have no need to change their place of concourse; where of old they were wont to sacrifice cattle to demons, thither let them continue to resort on the day of the Saint to whom the Church is dedicated, and slay their beasts, no longer as a sacrifice to demons, but for a social meal in honor of Him whom they now worship”.

This clearly illustrates the hi-jack operation the Church was engaging in – it was all about authoritarian control over the individual and society. Churches were built over the sites of pagan temples and sacred springs were renamed in honor of saints, yet the nature of reverence and worship remained unchanged. This reminds me of the piece called “Confessions of a Jew” where it states : “Then a patriotic Jew named Paul or Saul conceived the idea of humbling the Roman power by destroying the morale of its soldiery with the doctrines of love and non-resistance preached by the little sect of Jewish Christians. He became the Apostle to the Gentiles, he who hitherto had been one of the most active persecutors of the band. And so well did Paul do his work that within four centuries the great empire which had subjugated Palestine along with half of the world, was a heap of ruins. And the law which went forth from Zion became the official religion of Rome … From this time forth your history is little more than a struggle for mastery between your own old pagan spirit and our Jewish spirit … You no sooner broke free from your primitive religious simplicity and attempted the practice of the pagan Roman learning then Luther armed with our Gospel arose, to down you and re-enthrone our heritage … In full, of course, you never have accepted our Christian teachings. In your hearts you still are pagans … You Christians have never become Christianized. To that extent we have failed with you. But we have forever spoiled the fun of paganism for you … We should contemplate this confused ineffectual muddle which we call civilization, this half-Christian half-pagan medley, and we should say to you point-blank : For this mess thanks to you, to your prophets, and your Bible”. While most people adopted a Christian veneer, the one area where the medieval Church had little profound impact was in changing the spirituality of common people.

As so often happens when something gets forced down peoples` throats and they find out that they are being conned, the spirit of the Middle Ages challenged the Church’s now established authority. And as so often happens when people challenges the con-artists, including the government and organized religion, the Church responded by bolstering its authoritarian structure, asserting the Pope’s supremacy over all imperial powers. Cause and effect. Like the elites preparing for a world war today, things were coming to the boil, and the money masters were ready to put out any wild fires. With the revival of classical literature, the Church regarded poetry with particular disfavor, sometimes classifying poets with magicians whom the Church despised. Supporters of the arts were declared to be heathens and pagans because of their flourishing creativity. Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola dictated that classical poets should be banished and that science, culture and education should return entirely to the hands of monks. In “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy”, edited by Irene Gordon he states “The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell. It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since”. What this idiot means is that its easier to brainwash people when you destroy their culture and re-write lies into history, forming your own twisted idea of culture, is that not so Mr. Savonarola? Much of the work of Renaissance Florence, particularly those books of Latin and Italian poets, illuminated manuscripts, women’s ornaments, musical instruments, and paintings were burned in a huge bonfire in 1497.

The power-drunk Church, now enormously wealthy, interested itself more in collecting money than in relating to its members. Sound familiar? In order to prevent property from passing out of the Church to the families of clergy the Church forbade clergy to marry in the twelfth century. With the theory of the “plenitude of power”, the Pope now became the vicar of Christ and had full authority over both secular and spiritual affairs. In short, he became God on earth, the plan from the start, and now nearing its crescendo, the Church become ruthless to finish the job. This “theory” allowed the Pope to prohibit the distribution of sacraments within an imperial realm and to both excommunicate and depose a king. As evidence of the Pope’s supremacy over imperial powers, ancient letters were “discovered” and incorporated into canon law. One such letter purported to be a letter from Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester in which Constantine attributes his power to the Pope. The “Donation of Constantine” read : “”We give to Sylvester, the Universal Pope the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions”. These letters were exposed as total forgeries by the sixteenth century, but despite that, the Pope became increasingly involved in directing political conflicts and the conquering of lands. By now the conspiracy should be clear – remind you of politicians today? In another letter, Pope Boniface VIII wrote to the Hapsburg Albert of Austria, “We donate to you, in the plenitude of our power, the kingdom of France, which belongs of right to the Emperors of the West”. The twelfth century Pope Adrian IV sanctioned the English invasion of Ireland, and in his letters to King Henry II of England he wrote, “It is not doubted, and you know it, that Ireland and all those islands which have received the faith, belong to the Church of Rome; if you wish to enter that Island, to drive vice out of it, to cause law to be obeyed and St. Peter’s Pence to be paid by every house, it will please us to assign it to you”.

Popes now claimed not only that every person was subject to papal authority, but that the Pope himself was accountable to no one but God. The power-drunk Popes now saw themselves as superior to all other mortals, no wonder a few of these shysters would in later years get a bullet in the head sending them off to never-never land. Later in 1204 Pope Innocent III sent a group of crusaders to Constantinople where the soldiers of Christ fell upon with a vengeance, raping, pillaging and burning the city. Geoffrey Villehardouin chronicled the event and had this to say, never since the creation of the world had so much booty been taken from a city. No conversions? Of course not! It was all about vengeance, rape and pillaging – welcome to the New Order. In 1208 the Albigensian Crusade, to slaughter the Cathars began when Innocent III offered in addition to indulgences and eternal salvation, the lands and property of the heretics and their supporters to any who would take up arms. “Innocent?” Get real! The savagery of the thirty-year-long attack decimated Langedoc with 12,000 people being killed at the Cathedral of St. Nazair (10,000 people were killed by Bishop Folque of Toulouse). So this is what you call a “Bishop”? The massacre at Beziers as reported by papal legates was 20,000, by other chroniclers the numbers killed were between 60,000 and 100,000. When all was said and done, the Albigensian crusade killed an estimated one million people, not only Cathars but much of the population of southern France. Crusades were now launched against the Muslim, Greek and Jewish infidel to bring about lasting European unity under the banner of Christianity, but when that failed, the Church struck closer to home, attacking anyone who threatened its power or disobeyed its commands. Although the Albigensian crusade lasted 30 years, it ushered in a five-hundred-year-long period of brutal repression, the length and scope of which has no parallel in the Western world. Thats right, no parallel in the Western world!

Now that the Church was in the position to grab all power, it set out to smash all opposition and control the human spirit. The Christian Inquisition was the ultimate plan of organized religion to control people and contain their spirituality. Developed within the Church’s own twisted and sick framework, the Inquisition attempted to terrify people into obedience. The Inquisitor Francisco Pena stated in 1578, “We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others”. And there you have it as clear as day light – it was never about saving souls, but about the control of society and the imprisonment of individual thought and freedom. In these few words the whole religion conspiracy is revealed, and anyone that does not see the light deserves to be hit over the head with a sledge hammer, the truth hurts! Any person reading this and still believe that under Christianity the White Race achieved great accomplishments are either ignorant of historical facts or just plain stupid. For total power the inquisitor presided over inquisitional procedure as both prosecutor and judge, growing very rich from bribes and annual fines they received from the wealthy who paid to escape accusation. The Inquisition would claim all the money and property of alleged heretics and even went as far as to accused the dead of heresy, sometimes as much as seventy years after their death. Ruthlessness was the order of the day as the body of alleged heretic`s was exhumed and burned and all property confiscated from the heirs. Evidence for this can be found in “The Inquisition of the Middle Ages” by Lea. So money hungry were these Inquisitors that they were reluctant to pay for even the cost of feeding their victims, encouraging the families or the community to pay such costs.

The Council of Narbonne in 1244 ordered that in the sentencing of heretics, no husband should be spared because of his wife, nor wife because of her husband, nor parent because of helpless children, and no sentence should be mitigated because of sickness or old age. The words of the Gospel of John 15v16 were understood to sanction burning : “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned”. To ease their minds of the crime they were committing against humanity, the inquisitors and their assistants were granted the authority to quietly absolve each other from the crime of bloodshed in 1262. The excuse, the tortured had died because the devil broke their necks! As if burning was not painful enough, victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Another method of torture included victims being thrown into a pit full of snakes and buried alive. Yet another particularly gruesome torture involved turning a large dish full of mice upside down on the victim’s naked stomach, making a fire on top of the dish causing the mice to panic and burrow into the stomach. Before long all hell broke lose between the different Christian factions. Missionaries fought among themselves just as had early orthodox Christians who had “wanted to command one another” and lusted “for power over one another”, with no understanding of shared supremacy and authority. The Dominicans fought bitterly with the Jesuits in Japan and China, the Franciscans fought with the Capuchins in the Near East and the Jesuits fought several wars against the Capuchins in India. Orthodox Christians defended slavery as part of the divinely ordained hierarchical order finding support in passages of the Bible condoning slavery. Leviticus 25v44-46 stated, “Both thy bondmen, and thy bond maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond maids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they beget in your land : and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever”. In Ephesians 6v5, I Timothy 6v1 and Titus 2v9-10 St. Paul instructed slaves to obey their masters. Edmund Gibson the Bishop of London wrote, “The Freedom which Christianity gives, is a Freedom from the Bondage of Sin and Satan, and from the Dominion of Men’s Lusts and Passions and inordinate Desires; but as to their outward Condition, whatever that was before, whether bond or free, their being baptized, and becoming Christians, makes no manner of Change in it”. The barbaric Inquisition spanned centuries and was still active in some places as late as 1834. More on the Inquisition can be found in The White Mans Bible part 51 – “Thumbscrew and Rack”.